{"id":2316,"date":"2019-06-06T22:55:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T10:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2019-07-01T23:18:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T11:18:31","slug":"how-not-to-be-wrong-jordan-ellenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2019\/06\/06\/how-not-to-be-wrong-jordan-ellenberg\/","title":{"rendered":"How Not To Be Wrong — Jordan Ellenberg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One of the great joys of mathematics is the incontrovertible feeling that you’ve understood something the right way, all the way down to the bottom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

That’s how Ellenberg eloquently explains the appeal of mathematics. This book contains many examples of how mathematical thinking can lead to deep understanding of a lot of things, from statistics to politics to perspective. Nuggets of insight are everywhere — the discussion of statistical significance should be read by everybody. (In the meantime, you can get the gist from the XKCD cartoon Significant<\/cite><\/a>, which Ellenberg also cites.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from all the maths, there’s also an unexpectedly enlightening explanation of the thoughts and motivations of Antonin Scalia, the (in)famously arch-conservative US Supreme Court judge. I feel that I now understand the logic behind his uncompromising views. It may be flawed logic based on false premises, but at least I can see now how Scalia thought he was making sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book overlaps a bit with Charles Siefe’s Proofiness<\/cite><\/a>, but is probably more explicitly mathematical. Which is a good thing! (See the quote at the top of the page.)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the great joys of mathematics is the incontrovertible feeling that you’ve understood something the right way, all the way down to the bottom. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,167,57],"class_list":["post-2316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-books","tag-jordan-ellenberg","tag-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2328,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions\/2328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}